The Battle for the Gavel, Round One
House Republicans hold a nominal majority — one you get by counting noses. It lacks a functional majority — one you prove by joint action.
Will this week deliver a Speaker? Maybe. Effective leadership? No. Durable leadership? Not likely.
Residual effects? Misconstrued bargains, sharpened factional divides, deeper personal resentments, dashed ambitions, even thinner and more fragile margins via alienation, resignation or defection.
Here’s my cut through the fog.
Fever-dream visionaries sold the GOP on a series of heroic quests through uncharted territory. Now they’re stranded somewhere in the political wilderness, facing options that include political suicide … and political cannibalism.1
Sideline chatter initially focused on deal-making, up to and including panhandling a handful of votes2 across the aisle. (At best, these would yield thinner, more fractious majorities). Lately, talk is turning to the “next man up”.
The general drift is that after they dethrone McCarthy as a show of force, the odd lot of denialists, insurrectionists, Putinists, fantasists, fascists & smashists will be satisfied! The next aspirant then works out the factional jigsaw more easily.
Don’t count on it.
Wheeling and dealing toward 2183, McCarthy poisoned his own wells —and the next guy’s, who could invite defections by renegotiating that raft of bad bargains.
When squeaky wheels are greased, it’s often to the discomfort of more sober colleagues. Members of Congress routinely age, wither and die waiting patiently at the Speaker’s door for their turn at desired and deserved roles or pet provisions.
Each “next guy” in turn must confront Kevin’s concessions. Withhold a subcommittee gavel? You’ve got an unhappy ally. Wrench it from the hand of one who was already appreciating the heft of it? Now you’ve got an angry one.
To maintain discipline and smooth rough passages later in the two-year term, a leader may find it useful to keep discretionary favors in the display case, rather than dispensing them all up front. At the current pace of bargaining, shelf stock is running short … and every priceless tube of lube is a bone of contention.
Rule changes further impair speakership. Under liberalized “motion to vacate”, the Speaker lives on a bubble. Without proxy voting, committee votes face quantum-level uncertainty: any skipped heartbeat or missed travel connection tips the single-seat balance. Single-subject restrictions and a 72-hour rule will often bind the leadership to embarrassing “waive the rule” roll calls.
Placating the fringe, the next Speaker may steer policy far to the right of his team’s center of gravity. House GOP may lose close showdown votes, and won’t get much sympathy from their Senate colleagues.
A more robust alternative — a limited-term fusion majority on a shared policy diet — would demand big asks, big gives, big risks and long nights of hard bargaining, which has not occurred.
House R’s are stuck with House R’s, playing “Chicken” with the Speaker … the debt limit … and each others’ primaries. Game-theoretic extortion is now their tool of choice in most matters of politics and governance.
D’s (perhaps unwisely) are salivating over the spectacle in store. The House may be diminished as a legislative body, but as theatrical backdrop for the permanent campaign, it looks like pure political gold!
Forfeit in this exchange is one opening for old-school R’s to break out of the current (broken) Republican mold and carve out a “safe space” where a practicing pol can call a fact a fact, a lie a lie, and a nut a nut.
But another opening may yet come, and it may come before the end of the term.
Cue the Monty Python lifeboat sketch.
Or abstentions, moving the “majority” goalposts from 218 to some lesser quantum — presumably in return for promissory notes (disclosed of otherwise).
R’s may be fortunate McCarthy never got to 217, at which point every Member would have become a “President Manchin”.